Sensational and regrettable: Zemlin on NYT Solaris claims

By Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 03:37

Opinion and Analysis

A few days back, the New York Times online ran what was, for many, a sensational headline about Sun's Solaris: "Is Sun's Solaris on its deathbed?" While the piece was not written by its own staff, the fact that what many still consider to be a newspaper with some credibility ran with such a story did evoke plenty of reaction.
Now one of the people quoted in the article - indeed, the first person to be quoted - has come down heavily on it.

Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin had two words to describe the article - "sensational and regrettable."

He told iTWire that this was particularly so because it "coincided with another sensational story on (the) Sun's CEO compensation package."

What he was referring to was not exactly a story, but rather a blog entry on the website of Barrons, a weekly publication for investors from the Wall Street Journal - which, one must bear in mind, is now owned by Rupert Murdoch.

In the NYT article, Zemlin was quoted as saying, among other things, that Solaris had almost no new deployments and that it was being offered by a company with financial difficulties.

The Barrons blog entry, which was mostly based on an Associated Press story, seemed to bear this out, mentioning that Sun chief executive officer Jonathan Schwartz had been paid $US11 million for fiscal 2008 (salary plus options plus bonuses), including $US52,000 for a chauffeur.

It contrasted this with the fact that the 12-month period was one during which Sun had had no growth in revenue and had seen a 48 percent drop in its stock price.

According to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Sun has a little over $US2.2 billion in cash reserves.